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JUSTICE FOR JEWS FROM ARAB COUNTRIES AND THE REBRANDING OF THE JEWISH REFUGEE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2016

Shayna Zamkanei
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Abstract

Since its founding in 2002, the group Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) has appealed to governments, international organizations, and Jewish communities worldwide to recognize post-1948 Jewish emigrants from Arab countries as refugees. Yet prominent scholars, Israeli government officials, and Jewish political activists in Israel and the United States have traditionally opposed this designation. Why, then, have JJAC's efforts met with success? This article draws on the experiences of JJAC and its predecessor, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, as well as the claims of their critics, to argue that JJAC's accomplishments are due to the organization's ability to extricate the term “refugee” from a Zionist discursive context and to apply it within the framework of international law and human rights.

Keywords

activists/activismArab–Israeli conflictcitizenshipdiasporarefugees
Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 511 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am grateful to Orit Bashkin, Michael Geyer, Robert Gooding-Williams, Jennifer Pitts, and the three anonymous IJMES reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this project. I presented earlier versions of this article at the Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference in December 2014, and at the conference, “Thinking Beyond the Canon: New Themes and Approaches in Jewish Studies,” held at the University of California, Los Angeles in March 2015. All mistakes are my own.

1 France, the United States, and the United Kingdom absorbed close to 300,000 MENA Jews.

2 See, for example, Bashkin, Orit, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012Google Scholar); Beinin, Joel, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of the Modern Diaspora (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998Google Scholar); DellaPergola, Sergio,“‘Sepharadic and Oriental’ Jews in Israel and Western Countries: Migration, Social Change, and Identification” (Jerusalem: Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 2007Google Scholar); Laskier, Michael, North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1997Google Scholar); Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther, “Operation Magic Carpet: Constructing the Myth of the Magical Immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel,” Israel Studies 16 (2011): 149–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meir-Glitzenstein, Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s (New York: Routledge, 2004); and Stillman, Norman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 2003Google Scholar).

3 Boum, Aomar, “From ‘Little Jerusalems’ to the Promised Land: Zionism, Moroccan Nationalism, and Rural Jewish Emigration,” The Journal of North African Studies 15 (2010): 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this quotation, Boum is referring to Jews in rural southern Morocco, but his statement aptly characterizes the situation of Jews across the Middle East, except in Turkey and Iran.

4 Again, this excludes Turkey and Iran.

5 The most influential activists and critics largely came from Iraqi backgrounds. Within refugee organizational literature, films, and personal narratives, Iraq figures more prominently than any other country. This may be due to the historical and religious significance of Iraq's Jewish community, its prominence within 20th-century Iraqi society, and its high degree of integration and assimilation. But the Iraqi case also involved more state violations of international law than any other case.

6 This article is primarily concerned with WOJAC, JJAC, and MENA Jewish and governmental responses to them. Space constraints do not allow me to discuss the reaction of Arab governments and publics to these organizations. For a discussion of the Egyptian responses to JJAC's campaign, see Shayna Zamkanei, “The Politics of Justice for Arab Jews” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2015), chap. 4.

7 Extract from a letter sent by Naim S. Dangoor to Mordechai Ben-Porat, 10 June 1975.

8 Central Zionist Archives (CZA) 4633/12.

9 “The Legitimate Rights of Jews Forced to Abandon Arab Countries,” Knesset Minutes, 1 January 1975; CZA 4633/12.

10 CZA 4633/12.

11 See Roumani, Maurice, The Case of Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, 1978Google Scholar).

12 CZA 4633/12.

13 Some of the other newspapers that covered the story from 29 November 1978 to 1 December 1978 include The Times (London), The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The Daily News, 24 Heures (Lausanne), La Suisse, Neue Zürich Zeitung, Le Soir (Liège) and La Dernière Heure (Brussels).

14 Senator Lowell Weicker's address to an AIPAC conference held on 8 May 1978. See CZA 4633/12.

15 See Irwin Cotler, David Matas, and Stanley A. Urman, “Section E: The Legal Case for Rights and Redress,” in Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress (New York: Justice for Jews from Arab countries, 2007), accessed 23 January 2014, http://www.justiceforjews.com/jjac.pdf.

16 See Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, accessed 28 August 2015, http://www.justiceforjews.com/mission.html.

17 House Resolution 185, US Government Publishing Office, 1 April 2008, accessed 3 July 2014, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hres185/text.

18 Stanley Urman, “Seeking Justice for Displaced Jews,” presentation to the World Jewish Congress Executive Committee, Jerusalem, 19 October 2009.

19 The comparisons include: the number of resolutions passed that address each group's refugees; the number of agencies created that are responsible for protecting refugees; and the budget for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

20 Urman, “Seeking Justice.”

21 Oz Almog states that the word “sabra” was originally an insult that second- and third-wave immigrants directed at first-wave ʿolim. For more on this subject, see Almog, Oz, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew, trans. Watzman, Haim (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000Google Scholar).

22 Ibid., 1.

23 For instance, illustrations of combatants in official and unofficial newsletters depicted them in typical sabra dress and emphasized sabra bonding rituals.

24 Almog, The Sabra, 98.

25 See Ben-Porat, Mordechai, To Baghdad and Back: The Miraculous 2,000 Year Homecoming of the Iraqi Jews (New York: Gefen Books, 1995), 279–80Google Scholar.

26 Shenhav, Arab Jews, 158–59.

27 Ibid.

28 See Sammy Smooha, “Pluralism: A Study of lntergroup Relations in Israel” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1973); and Smooha, Israel: Pluralism and Conflict (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978).

29 Shenhav, Arab Jews, 183. I reference Shenhav here because these specific quotations appear not only in his book and academic articles, but also in several of his op-eds. The latter have been frequently quoted by organizations and policymakers in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.

30 Hillel, Shlomo, “The Campaign against Jews in Arab Countries,” The Scribe: Journal of Babylon Jewry 1 (1972): 2Google Scholar.

31 Dangoor, Naim, “Third International Conference of WOJAC,” The Scribe: Journal of Babylon Jewry 20 (1986): 6Google Scholar.

32 See The Scribe: Journal of Babylon Jewry (April 1997); and The Scribe: Journal of Babylon Jewry 74 (2001).

33 Morris, Benny, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–1998 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 43Google Scholar.

34 Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther, “Our Dowry—Identity and Memory among Iraqi Immigrants in Israel,” Middle Eastern Studies 38 (2002): 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See Shenhav, Yehouda, “Spineless Bookkeeping: The Use of Mizrahi Jews as Pawns against Palestinian Refugees,” 972 Magazine, 25 September 2012Google Scholar, accessed 17 February 2014, http://972mag.com/spineless-bookkeeping-the-use-of-mizrahi-jews-as-pawns-against-palestinian-refugees/56472.

36 See Shenhav, “Spineless Bookkeeping.”

37 Rachel Shabi, “Another Side to the Jewish Story,” The Guardian, 27 June 2008, accessed 18 January 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/27/religion.israelandthepalestinians.

38 See ibid. Shenhav is actually mentioned in her article: “What's more, if you take the line that Zionism both caused Palestinians to leave their homes and brought Middle Eastern Jews to Israel, then the refugee offset equation is, as the Israeli professor Yehouda Shenhav puts it, a form of ‘double-entry accounting.’”

39 Shenhav, “Spineless Bookkeeping.”

40 For an account of German Jewish refugees, see Grenville, Anthony, Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria in Britain, 1933–1970 (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2010), 47–48Google Scholar.

41 I have not encountered MENA Jewish refugee literature that addresses the status of Zionists displaced from Palestine during World War I.

42 Almog, The Sabra, 82.

43 Segev, Tom, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000), 154Google Scholar.

44 Yablonka, Hanna, “Oriental Jewry and the Holocaust: A Tri-Generational Perspective,” Israel Studies 14 (2009): 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Amira Lam, “An Interview with Sami Michael,” 7 Yamim, Yediot Aharonot, 7 September 2001, 28–34, 112.

46 Ibid., 94.

47 Ibid., 108.

48 Ibid., 111.

49 Ran Cohen in Knesset discussion. See “Claims of Jews from Arab Countries,” The 349th Meeting of the Eleventh Knesset, Knesset Minutes, 29 July 1987.

50 Archives concerning the fārhūd can be found in Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

51 “The Holocaust and Sephardi Jews,” The Scribe 24 (October 1987): 8.

52 Kahalon is referring to the Nazi occupation of Tunisia between November 1942 and May 1943. See Abitbol, Michel, Les Juifs d'Afrique du Nord sous Vichy (Paris: Riveneuve Éditions, 2008Google Scholar).

53 The shift in how Holocaust survivors were viewed in Israel and the United States is not enough to account for JJAC's success, given that it began midway through WOJAC's tenure.

54 Ofer Aderet, “Israel to Compensate Iraqi, Moroccan, Algerian Jews for Holocaust-era Perseuction,” Haaretz, 4 December 2015, accessed 7 December 2015, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.690077.

55 Shenhav, “Spineless Bookkeeping.”

56 Yehouda Shenhav, “Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet,” Haaretz, 15 August 2003, accessed 17 February 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/hitching-a-ride-on-the-magic-carpet-1.97357.

57 Meir-Giltzenstein, “Our Dowry,” 182.

58 Author's private communication with Heskel Haddad, October 2012, New York.

59 The Scribe 60 (December 1993): 4.

60 Shenhav, Arab Jews, 169.

61 See, for example, Shenhav, “Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet”; Shehav, “Spineless Bookkeeping”; Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, “The Truth about the Expulsion,” Haaretz, 9 October 2012, accessed 13 September 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-truth-about-the-expulsion.premium-1.468823; Fischbach, Michael, Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab–Israeli Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Levenson, Alan, The Wiley–Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism (Malden, Mass., : Wiley–Blackwell, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar), chap. 34.

62 Author's private communication with Heskel Haddad, October 2012, New York. See also Heskel Haddad, “World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC): History and Purpose,” The Jewish Voice, 17 October 2014, accessed 24 January 2014, http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2165:world-organization-of-jews-from-arab-countries-wojac-history-and-purpose&catid=113:oped&Itemid=296.

63 Shenhav, “Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet.”

64 Benjamin Netanyahu, opening address at the conference “Justice for Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran,” Jerusalem, 12 September 2012.

65 This sentiment was expressed to me by Egyptian, Moroccan, and Iraqi Jews whom I interviewed in October and November 2012 in New York City.

66 Haddad, Emma, The Refugee in International Society: Between Sovereigns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 65Google Scholar.

67 See Article 1, Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted 28 July 1951, accessed 6 April 2016, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/StatusOfRefugees.aspx.

68 Text of the “Working Paper,” 5 October 1977, Israel State Archives (ISA) 6862/6.

69 Avi Shlaim, review of In Ishmael's House: A History of the Jews in Muslim Lands, by Martin Gilbert, Financial Times, 30 August 2010, accessed 17 February 2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8ae6559c-b169-11df-b899-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2tc8J90Eg. The two reasons are not mutually exclusive, however, since nationalization policies targeted Jews more than others. See Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry.

70 Shlaim, review of In Ishmael's House.

71 It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Mandatory Palestine.

72 “Excerpt from the Text of Mr. Dangoor's Address at the Iraqi Jewish Club, London, 18 September 1984,” as printed in The Scribe 15 (January–February 1985).

73 Letter to the Editor, The Scribe 16 (September 1985).

74 Shenhav, “Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet.”

75 Shenhav, “Spineless Bookkeeping.”

76 Lara Friedman, “Exploiting Jews from Arab Countries,” The Daily Beast, 2 August 2012, accessed 17 January 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/02/exploiting-jews-from-arab-countries.html. “Strangers in a foreign land” is a biblical expression to describe the Jews in Egypt.

77 Ibid.

78 See Zerubavel, Yael, “The ‘Mythological Sabra’ and Jewish Past: Trauma, Memory, and Contested Identities,” Israel Studies 7 (2002): 115Google Scholar.